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Our Promise Rings and The Oscars

Well, hello my fellow movie lovers. Whadda ya think?

I'm sorry I didn't find the time to put up my pics and predictions. I went to my favorite flea market today, had a blast, and wound up staying too late. I just love the people there so much, particularly my pals Sandy and Cheryl who are always so much fun to visit and of course have some terrific things. I had given everyone credit who had sold things to me that showed up in the home decor magazine we were recently in so it was fun taking the magazine around and showing it to people. I gave one precious copy to Eleanor, who runs this super upscale market, in the hope that she will eventually let me sell there. She's offered to let me sell on the first Sunday of every month, but that show is so small that I don't know if it would be worth it. Maybe it would be good practice, as a kind of test run to see if I can do it, but the best show would be the one that happens on the fourth Sunday of every month. This is the one where Rachel Ashwell, the owner and founder of the whole Shabby Chic phenomenon, does her shopping.

I dropped a can of enchilada sauce on my toe at the market today. It rolled right out of that part of the basket where a child's legs would hang down through, and I was really surprised by how much it hurt. I felt like a little girl who at first acts kind of surprised but then wails when the pain comes on. Of course I didn't let on how much it hurt, instead I tried to play it down because it's always so embarrassing when you do something stupid and get hurt in public, but it was so painful. It's pretty swollen and I can't bend it so I'm hoping it isn't broken.

Last night was Atra's Mom's birthday and I had a good time going over there, giving her gifts, hanging out with all of their friends and eating Rashti food that I have developed a serious food passion for. Isn't that weird, that I would end up loving food that originally looked so bland and goopy to me that I would just put the tiniest bit on my plate and then push it around my plate for a while just to be polite. I'm still not completely over this bladder hurting and hung in there as long as I could, which was pretty long for me, but Atra's parties go on forever and there was just no way I was going to make it until two AM like her eighty-something-year-old doctor pals did. Everyone who comes to their parties is either a doctor, a lawyer or some other kind of successful professional person. I spent most of the night going between a world famous doctor of radiology who I adore, seriously, I love this man, and a female psychiatrist who wanted to argue about whether there really is such a thing as attention deficit disorder. Maybe I should have acted more distracted in order to prove my case but I really did enjoy speaking with her. I like talking with smart people, it's stimulating, interesting, and a change of pace considering most of my conversations are held in broken Spanish or with a fourteen year old and my little girl of a Mom.

This is one of my pal Cheryl's photos that she sells on eBay as Lablover49.

I finally broke down and just went ahead and bought rings for Scott and myself today. I also bought this cool, gold ball, studded with gemstones, that looks kind of like Sputnik. It wasn't expensive and it's exactly like a ring I bought from my pal Cheryl at the same Flea Market a year or so ago. Ring-wise I've been hinting around about wanting us to exchange them for a few years now, and my guy just wasn't picking up the clues, or maybe he was rebelling against the idea 'cause he's a bit of a non-traditional, 70's, anti-romantic-hero in this one way, which doesn't make any sense because I've never felt as safe, fidelity-wise, as I do with this man. The way I see it is that as long as he's going to be faithful he might as well reap the benefits of it. Hey, I'm obviously a catch here, and he'd better watch out or I might just run off with the wall eyed Mexican guy at the local Persian market who is always hitting on me. Either that guy or one of the many service people I run into who are always giving me the, I-Wouldn't-Mind-Having-A-Slice-'O-You looks on a pretty regular basis.

For someone who has been married twice, and almost always been in a long-term monogamous relationship, it seems odd to me that in his mind he's more of a roving playboy, while I am traditional, in that I want the safety and comfort of a monogamous commitment. Sometimes I worry that he's a serial monogamist who goes from one ten year relationship to another, moving on when things become too challenging, too close to the truth for comfort.

Over the last couple of months I'd tried to be more specific about what it was I was needing; a kind of promise ring, something that celebrates our relationship, or honors it in a more spiritually meaningful way, something that tells the world that we are more than just a couple of people who are dating. He had agreed, but after all of this time I just couldn't wait anymore, so I took a risk and bought a traditional, gold, Tiffany band for him and two platinum and diamond bands for myself and then surprised him with them during the Oscars. I actually felt kind of stressed and fearful about the whole thing because I wasn't sure how he would react and despite all of my writing to the contrary there is a part of me that is afraid of commitment.

I have always wanted all of those dreamy, romantic, fairy tale things that I was raised to wish for. I read bridal magazines. I dream of losing another hundred pounds and wearing a gorgeous Vera Wang dress and having the most incredible wedding and wedding night. So of course I long for a fantastic, romantic, loving, and amazingly creative, cherry-on-the-top-of-the-ice-cream-sunday, kind of proposal, and I haven't given up the hope that this might happen some time, if he cares enough, and gets that it means so much to me that I need him to make it happen. But given that we haven't been able to make living together work for us yet, and the fact that he isn't in a position to spend any real amount of money on anything like this, I figured I'd just dive in and get us something to wear temporarily. I honestly couldn't wait anymore, and the whole thing makes me so nervous I just wanted to get it over with.

I put his super classic and traditional Tiffany band in a nice box, waited for a good moment during the Oscars, then took it out, gave it to him, and asked him if he wanted to be my partner. I don't even remember if he said yes. Then I gave him mine and he put it on my finger. Can you believe this lucky guy? He's never ever had to propose to a woman. The women have always proposed to him.

We're calling these promise rings. When he asked me last week what we'd be promising each other I don't even remember what I said, but right now I think we're promising to be honest and faithful. I told him that his means that he has to say no to all of those women out there who want to give him head, then come tell me what happened so we can work through it, and that mine means I can have sex with whoever I want whenever I want, as long as I tell him about it afterwards, bwa ha ha. But really I guess I'm thinking of them as place markers in the book of our relationship. For some silly reason, because of this simple traditional thing, this wannabe exchanging of less-than-wedding rings, I somehow feel a little more safe, like this means that we belong to each other in a more committed way.

Nothing's changed at all, we're already committed and faithful, or at least I like to think we are,) and we obviously love each other, despite the fact that we hurt each other's feelings and piss each other off from time to time. But for the most part I think we really do love and care for one another, we're already partners, we're a couple, we're family, so we might as well have one of the more outward signs of our love. Now if he'd just take me away on a beach vacation, hire a skywriter to fly overhead and write, "Will you marry me," in smoke across the sky, hand me a glass of champagne with another ring in it, I could die happy. Well, not before I lose the rest of this weight, win an Oscar, meet all the surviving members of my birth family and find out who my Father is, but this would get me that much closer to realizing my little girl princess dreams.

But getting back to something much, much, more important the Oscar's -- what do you think about the show and how close were you in predicting the winners? I need to tally up my wins here and let you know...lemme see.... it looks like I didn't do so well this year darn it. I got eighteen out of twenty-four, which sucks. Man, I used to win this every year. I used to do so well at this that we had to stop taking cash bets because it seemed rude to host a party where at the end of the night I always wound up keeping the prize. I was thrown by the two hardest categories, the short films. If I could have seen them, then I could have made a better informed guess, darn it. One of the other categories I blew was costuming because my pal Jen was rooting for Lemony Snicket and I figured I'd go with her on this. I really thought Scorsese would win, or I thought that it would be a split of some kind, you know, Clint for one and Scorsese for the other. With the Aviator sweeping so many important categories it really seemed like one big lead up to Scorsese's win.

I love Clint but I hate seeing people get their hopes dashed. Despite the fact that I think it's mean to do, it's funny to me how when you see the camera trained on the nominees faces you can really tell who is upset because they had really thought they would win. During the best actress win it looked like the actress who had been nominated for Maria Full of Grace was upset. I thought, "How weird, didn't anyone tell her that she was the darkest horse -- the longest shot -- and as a relative Hollywood newcomer, despite her solid performance, that she was lucky to have received the nomination?" I mean I seriously wonder if when someone achieves a certain amount of industry success, that they are so surrounded by sycophants and yes people that their sense of reality gets kind of twisted. On the outside of all of this it seems pretty damned obvious who the front runners are. I mean do you think that Leonardo Dicaprio thought he had any kind of chance of beating Jamie Fox? Did Alan Alda, who I adore, think that he had any chance of beating out Morgan Freeman's very, very fine and well deserved win?

And what about how terrific it is that our entertainment industry is finally opening it's doors to people of all colors and nationalities, or at least making all the right moves in this direction. How good did it feel to see an Oscar show hosted by a black man, where there were not one but three major African American nominees, and for the second time in two years a black man won the best actor award? I couldn't be happier about this and the fact that we had some older women nominated as well, now if one of them would just win, that'd really be a good day.

I really felt sorry for the nominees in those categories that were minimized by their having to accept their awards in the audience or line up on stage. Yes it sped things up but I would rather skip the stupid musical numbers than make people feel as if their very important work isn't all that important. I mean can you imagine an Academy Award winning film without makeup. Would Cate Blanchett have won otherwise, well, that's a bad example because she's wonderful, but what about so many of the other nominated actors? Just try to imagine Million Dollar Baby without Hillary Swank's broken and bleeding nose, or Javier Bardem laying in bed looking like the healthy man that he is. What about this category makes the Academy think it's fine to force the winners to sit together in a tight little group and then accept their awards <b>in the audience</b> like contestants on some cheesy game show. This really pissed me off. Having the other nominees line up on stage was only marginally better because of the fact that the people who didn't get Oscar's got to stand there for a moment as well.

I have to say that I am one of the few people I know who really likes the acceptance speeches. I enjoyed hearing one of the winners say that he had been practicing his speech in his bathtub since he was eight years old. I can relate to this because I've been dreaming the same dream my entire life, and it's really these moments that are my favorite part of the show. I mean how wonderful was Jamie Fox's speech, how much more can you ask for than to hear a man say that he talks to his dead grandmother in his dreams? Yes, I think there should be some kind of time limit, but I would gladly watch a longer show if that meant that no one would have to sweat out this time limit, no one would have to try to rattle off a list of thanks in thirty seconds, and squeeze something personally meaningful or profound into those last few seconds as the mic disappears into the floor and the music swells to play them off.

Oh and I can't wrap this entry up without saying again that I think that casting directors are sorely overlooked at the Oscars and deserve a category. It just isn't fair that they aren't ever nominated when they play such a crucial role in the making of any movie. I'd love to lead a campaign for adding casting to the list of nominations, but I'm an actor and this kind of thing would have to come from someone else, because otherwise it would just look self serving, as if I were trying to curry favor with the very people who hold the keys to the kingdom.

Well, I'm really beat, and my arms are tired of waving the poor kitties away from the keyboard so I'm going to end this somewhere near here. I just reviewed Beau's homework with him. He had to write an essay about an autobiography of a girl who, as a Japanese American, was interned with her family during WWII. Yes, I think, or I pray, that things are changing for the better.

Do you think that one of these years I'll be out there partying with all of the many people who won Oscars, instead of sitting here by the TV writing about it? I actually thought about trying to muster up the energy to get out there and crash say the lobby of The Four Seasons or something like that, but I don't want to go that way. I don't want to be a celebrity gawker. I've got to say that it's hard sitting here watching so many people that I knew as a young gal, getting up there on that stage presenting, winning awards, and then being interviewed on E afterwards. I want to be the one saying, "I am so blessed -- to be a working actor -- and to receive this on top of it, oh my this is just so bla bla bla wonderful..."